Most though, are sitting around and hoping that one of the big dogs will give them a crate of stock certificates for their cute (hastily developed and full of vulnerabilities) web application which they built with other peoples money who want their inv…

http://lemurware.blogspot.com/.....-ruby.html

May this give the growing Ruby community a leg up on doing cool things with the Yelp data.

1. FriendsEAT.com - Food and dining site made by some dude in his spare time. Gorgeous design and cool Fan System

2. Grouprecipes.com - Fun recipe website with thousands of good recipes. Cool ajax!

3. allrecipes.com - Just bought by Scripps Network (food network)….i guess all our recipes will be branded by FN.

get over yelp. it’s too busy. Too much $. Give me 16 million..I’ll hire 30 pakistani developers and give you insiderpages.

Another competitor to Yelp is http://www.mojopages.com

For some reason techcrunch has never covered them.
Probably because they are not in silicon valley, but Southern Cal.

Local review site Yelp quietly released an API today to allow third parties to access much of the content and features of the service….

Kidding aside, I still have problems with Yelp for several reasons. First, there is a group of people that I’ll call “naysayers”. These are some people who post a very negative review about any business. If you go look at all their reviews you won’t find a positive comment anywhere. They’re happy complaining.

Of course, there are the “Pollyanna’s” to counter these folks. They could get food poisoning from a business and blame it on themselves or any other factor, but the restaurant.

It appears everyone is weighted the same. I suspect a portion of the “naysayers” or “Pollyanna’s” are fictional based on the restaurants I’ve reviewed and know. Reviews created for the benefit of the business or a competitor. A common problem with many review sites and it dilutes the value of people that post honest opinions.

The other failing I see with Yelp is in their sales. I’ve been asked by a number of local merchants about the service. The sales people will stop by and say that the business has great reviews and they should advertise. What they don’t give the merchant is good qualitative data about sponsorship/ads and the ROI. Merchants need to know what is the return on their ad spend. Even basic stats don’t seem to be available. I could be wrong about this, but I’ve been asked a half dozen times from different merchants. At least with Google AdWords, merchants have stats to determine ROI.

In concept, I like Yelp and would like to see them succeed as I think the service makes sense especially for travelers or people new to an area.

Oh, and I don’t work for Yelp……

When I am either looking for a local shop or checking a place someone has suggested we go to, I use Yelp first, everything else second.

As others have said Yelp has such a strong community. I do notice that Yelp skews very upper class in income and so forth.

And secondly they have no on-the-ground sales force. Most small businesses aren’t going the self-serve route. Most of the readers on this website think that Silicon Valley and San Fran are the norm. No one spends more time online than you folks, so don’t expect biz owners in Houston to be acting like you.

Lastly, paid Yelpers like Ryan totally undermine what Yelp should be about. UNBIASED REVIEWS. If I think people are doing these reviews simply cause they’re getting paid, what’s the point? Word of mouth is powerful because there is no “agenda” other than seeing a friend share in a good experience (or avoid a potential bad one).

If I owned a restaurant in a city, I’d hire one of my staff to be a Yelper, and have that person trash all of my competitors. Simple enough huh?

Also most of the reviews are from the ranting, foul-mouthed myspace crowd who often get it wrong. If you ask me Zagat’s is more on the mark.

Really? I didn’t notice that. Most reviews seem relatively normal to me, if not possibly manufactured in certain cases.

Also - Yelp seems down for me. Did they get Crunched?

I think the uber-loyalty and cliqueness is actually in their favor unless they want to be come a huge, mass-market review site, which I don’t know if they do.

At the other extreme, local businesses which are slammed on Yelp clearly aren’t going to advertise their business on an online community that slams their goods and services. Hence, using an old term from b-school, Yelp is “stuck in the middle”.

I personally know quite a few restaurant owners and GM’s who have had their restaurants reviewed on Yelp. None advertise, yet their comments range from “I love Yelp, it’s great for business” to “Yelp sucks”.

I use Yelp occasionally, but I still prefer the old fashioned personal experience so that I can form my own opinions.

Also most of the reviews are from the ranting, foul-mouthed myspace crowd who often get it wrong. If you ask me Zagat’s is more on the mark.